Simunovic Dora, Dorfman Anna, Katzir Maayan
Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences, Constructor University, Campus Ring 1, Bremen, Germany.
Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel.
Commun Psychol. 2024 Jun 18;2(1):59. doi: 10.1038/s44271-024-00080-x.
This work explored polarization over Israel's Judicial Reform, introduced in January 2023. We find that the reform divided people into pro- and anti-reform camps, which differed in characteristics such as institutional trust, patriotism, and national identity. For example, the camps disagreed about trust in the government versus the judiciary. In line with motivated reasoning-biased reasoning processes used to reach desired conclusions-people's pre-existing characteristics motivated polarized views of the reform as a threat to democracy (issue-based polarization) and negative emotions towards opponents (affective polarization). Further demonstrating a motivated process, pro-reform participants (the electorate majority), prioritized majority rule over other democratic features (e.g., minority rights) compared to anti-reform participants. Polarization differentially predicted downstream consequences (e.g., protest methods), indicating that the camps' reactions were motivated by the extremity of their views and negative emotions. This work extends the understanding of potentially motivated polarization processes and their immediate downstream consequences.
这项研究探讨了以色列于2023年1月推出的司法改革引发的两极分化现象。我们发现，改革将人们分为支持改革和反对改革的阵营，这两个阵营在制度信任、爱国主义和国家认同等特征方面存在差异。例如，两个阵营在对政府与司法机构的信任问题上存在分歧。与动机性推理——用于得出期望结论的有偏差的推理过程一致——人们先前存在的特征促使他们对改革产生两极分化的看法，将其视为对民主的威胁（基于问题的两极分化），并对反对者产生负面情绪（情感两极分化）。进一步证明了这是一个动机性过程，与反对改革的参与者相比，支持改革的参与者（选民中的多数）在多数决与其他民主特征（如少数群体权利）之间更倾向于多数决。两极分化对下游后果（如抗议方式）有不同的预测作用，这表明两个阵营的反应是由其观点的极端程度和负面情绪所驱动的。这项研究扩展了我们对潜在的动机性两极分化过程及其直接下游后果的理解。
